...with a fricken' laser attached to his head...

then I would rule the world!!!

Stationing one in Harlem, one in Brooklyn, and one near the old World Trade Center.

Mayor Bloomberg announced that this new enhanced defense against terror attacks would be bolstered by one enhancement to the basic military model. Each mobile NYPD unit would also have 300-750 medium to long range Tasers, intended for crowd control and the occupy movement. When perfected, the mobile taser system could independently target up to fifty sign carrying demonstrators at an one time, while still protecting against airborne threats.

which satellite buys it?

The beam will be widely dispersed by the time it reaches anything in orbit. Think of your standard laser pointer. Aim it at your hand. Now aim it at the wall across the room. Now aim it at the building a block away. Now across town. Now several hundred miles up into low-earth orbit and beyond. Although the beam of this weapon is stronger, it has to be not just pointed at but focused on the target in order to be effective. Its purpose is to heat the object to the point of structural failure or igniting on-board fuel, ideally while it the object is still over the enemy that launched it.

The tests of the airborne laser showed that the focusing system works well, as long as the laser does not melt the mirrors. Another design uses multiple smaller lasers to converge on a target. One day, these systems will be placed on ships to counter anti-ship missiles like the Chinese Silkworm.

Any organics in the path of a misfired unfocused beam probably won't fair well at close range; blindness and heat effects possible. But such weapons are meant to be aimed skywards at missiles rather than ground targets, so ground-based casualties from a misfired ground-based beam are going to be unlikely. More likely something goes wrong with the device and it harms the operating crew. The airborne beam is a bit more concerning (I already knew about it, but completely forgot about it before crafting my posts) though it has similar conditions as its ground-based counterpart. The next few decades will show us if these are feasible systems.

In exactly what theater is this platform supposed to be survivable?

Moreover, this is merely a demonstration vehicle, not meant for actual action. The laser in this thing is 10 times less powerful than what will eventually be fielded. I'm having trouble tracking down better articles, but if memory serves their range is supposed to be significantly better than the old Patriot Missile defense system, coupled with UAVs spotting targets at distance.

Yet another very fancy, very expensive weapon system that will be defeated by a couple of guys with a LAW rocket or a land mine. At best something like this MAY take out guidance systems, which means you still have an armed missile coming at you, it's just now ballistic rather than guided, and that assumes that you can identify, track and respond to an attack fast enough.

And we wonder where so much money went to in the last decade.

pretty much render it useless.

Give it to two PFCs who've been in the Army a year and a half, and send them down a muddy, rutty old road out in the Back 40 of any army post. (I can think of a few roads on Fort Campbell that would be perfect for this.) If it still works when it gets to the range, Boeing did its job right.

Now that's thinking. Except I believe that the sort of testing you are talking about actually is in the testing program.

about having to sign a loyalty oath in order to sign a loyalty oath

The Army has spent untold millions of dollars retrofitting and repairing expensive systems the manufacturers sent into the field without shock mounts. Or worse, systems that are fragile enough shock mounts won't help.

Boeing is now busy working on shrinking them down and putting them in drones.

We're not going to be seeing any SkyNet Laser Death Drones in our lifetimes.

We have one in New Mexico I believe.

That would be news to the US military and every defense contractor in the country, that someone in New Mexico has a laser weapon system that can do that. China took out an old weather sat of their own, and we shot down one of our own spy sats (which was malfunctioning), both with missiles. Again, the distances involved are beyond the capabilities of currently-developed laser weapons to be shooting down satellites.

Those were missles that the US and China used. All we shot down were UAVs.

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/technology/technology_ap_albuquerque_boeing_laser_200901261051


I will drink coffee BEFORE posting next time.

It sure looks like we are trying in White Sands though, I wonder what progress we have made that they won't talk about:




"The Pentagon first tested an anti-satellite laser in October 1997, after a cold-war era Congressional ban on targeting satellites had expired. Shots from a two-million-watt test laser based at White Sands in New Mexico were fired at one of the Pentagon's own satellites, to test its vulnerability to enemy lasers. One lesson was that the atmosphere spread the powerful beam over a large area, reducing its intensity.

Ongoing efforts have therefore concentrated on compensating for beam-dissipating atmospheric effects with adaptive optics. This involves using deformable mirrors or a material with variable refractive properties to compensate for atmospheric distortion. The technology was originally developed to improve the propagation of high-power laser beams but is now widely used in astronomy.

In 2005 the US Air Force assembled a new adaptive optics system that uses a laser beam to excite sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere. This produces a bright spot that can be monitored with a telescope to provide an accurate measure of atmospheric perturbation.

The Air Force was awarded $4.9 million for 2006 to test the sodium-beam adaptive optics system using a 3.5-meter telescope at the Starfire Optical Range in New Mexico. These tests will determine how well the system could aid laser tracking of a satellite in low-earth orbit."


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9104-us-plans-antisatellite-lasers.html

...just isn't there yet. I'm guessing by the 2030s we'll see full effective deployment of laser systems, pretty much for anti-missile and anti-sat. Handheld laser weapons are unlikely, given the power requirements and excess heat issues.

Just ask those state of the art armed to the teeth tribal Afghan rebels, or the Baghdad civilians during Shock and Awe.

God! I fucking hate this shit!

I have an idea! Why not practice on those filthy OWSers!

Our preparations before 9/11 were pathetic. There was all kinds of data available about what campus radicals were up to and we missed it.

Instead, Boeing gets a huge amount of public money to build this kind of stuff.

you are channeling your inner G. Gordon Liddy.

Or maybe I'm just not getting it.

Kolesar has a wickedly dry sense of humor and a good sense of

Welcome to the end times when Hel MD, aka Dr. Hell, will shine death upon ye.

Just wait til Bill Murray gets his hands on THIS!